“As many predicted, Apple yesterday posted record-breaking earnings for the recent holiday quarter,” Yoni Heisler writes for BGR. “When the dust settled, Apple recorded $88.3 billion in revenue, nearly $4 billion more than the revenue it posted during the same quarter a year ago.”

“Revenue aside, iPhone sales for the quarter did check in below some analyst projections. Specifically, Apple sold 77.3 million iPhones during the last three months of 2017, representing a slight decrease from the 78.3 million units it sold during the holiday quarter last year,” Heisler writes. “While some were quick to pounce on a year-over-year decrease in iPhone sales as evidence that we’ve reached peak iPhone — a sentiment analysts have been hurling at Apple for quite a few years now — a closer look at the numbers reveals that the strength of Apple’s iPhone line remains incredibly healthy, if not under-appreciated.”

“For starters, it’s worth noting that Apple’s 2017 holiday quarter included 13 weeks while the 2016 holiday quarter encapsulated 14 weeks,” Heisler writes. “Doing some simple math, Apple over the last quarter sold 5.94 million iPhones per week (77.3/13). In a hypothetical scenario where the recent quarter included 14 weeks — as it did last year — it’s fair to assume that Apple could have easily sold upwards of 83 million iPhones.”

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13 Comments

Both Tim and Luca .. reitterated the quarter length issue several times at the conferance call..
They even did the math and handed it out to the reporters…….

Were those reporters deaf ? Or choose selectively to be deaf.

It is really screwed up…
The company say: hey folks, look .. keep in mind the number week difference… compare apples to apples not oranges… our growth rate would have been 21% ( staggering 21% for a company thus size ) not 13% had we had same number if weeks to sell. ….our sell through has actually Accelerated! They said this several times in a course of an hour…..

Yet strangly reporters and analcyst…..Somehow did not hear it..

It just so F-ed up…
to act so irresponsibly… and deceitfully …..Yet zero accountability ..
Is this what we want US of A to be ?

““When the dust settled, Apple recorded $88.3 billion in revenue, nearly $4 billion more than the revenue it posted during the same quarter a year ago.”

I tend to discount the conclusions of anyone who makes a basic error such as the one in the sentence above. Apple posted revenues of $78.4 billion in the same quarter a year ago, not the implied $84.3 billion ($4 billion less than the $88.4 billion of this year’s quarter).

This year was a whopping $9.9 BILLION MORE than the same quarter last year.

That being said, her basic point about the 13/14 week quarter dichotomy is true. Had this year been a 14 week quarter the figures would have looked much better in comparison. A fourteen week quarter would have provided sales of 83.25 million iPhones, 14.18 million iPads, and 5.5 million Macs, and gross revenues of $94.8 Billion to compare against the 14 weeks of 2017’s quarter.

Other than that, I just would like to know if someone somewhere would care to consider that the “effects”of this new US tax plan would include obviously more cash available for some folks out there to replace for a brand new and superior IPhone , their “cheap” and “quality inferior “ smart phones that for years now the carriers like Verizon and others keep showing down the throat of those not able to afford for something better…
And that’s here in the USA…how about those in emergents markets like in China , which its own economy , as a “ripple effect” of this more heated American economy, would benefit as well selling more of their “cheap” stuff to us, but in the process also creating more jobs and more businesses opportunities over there generating more cash available for more consumers eager to get the same “better quality” iPhone instead those crappy smart phone that infest the Asian markets….
So …just taking that in consideration, and we will have a “greater” market for Apple products….
But, strangely , nothing like that has been considered by Wall Street and media pundits….